


Aspirin, Eggs, and Coffee

by hufflepirate



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Friendship, Gen, Hangover, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Domesticity, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5884453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a night out leaves Sara with a hangover, she's lucky the next morning is relatively unhurried as she navigates her way around everyone else she has to share the Waverider with.  It's a good thing they're all getting used to sharing their single, small bathroom.  Routines help - and sometimes, so do her friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aspirin, Eggs, and Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Based on/inspired by this post: http://batmanisagatewaydrug.tumblr.com/post/138477234679/batmanisagatewaydrug-assbuttsassemble
> 
> There were a couple of details I couldn't get worked in, but most of them are here. Also, credit where credit's due, the Captain Cold goggle idea was straight-up batmanisagatewaydrug's, not mine.

Mornings on the Waverider were a disaster, especially since most of the team members aboard were morning showerers. Stein had switched to evening showers, after their first morning on the ship, when he grew so frustrated with everyone else that he grabbed Jax's hand and became Firestorm and would have lit them all on fire if Jax hadn't been the one driving.

Rip had quietly followed him, staying out of everyone's way and spending most of his mornings looking for a quiet part of the ship and pretending he _hadn't_ recruited a team of uncontrollable and wild outcasts who threw punches at each other over things like, say, who had and hadn't used somebody else's soap.

(Ray's eye was fine, now, and Sara was much more careful to put things back _exactly where and how she'd found them_ any time she stole a squirt of Snart's surprisingly effective facial wash.)

Ray had also switched to evening showers, because it seemed like the path of least resistance, and he had to reserve his energy for becoming a Legend. Or something. Sara wasn't really sure.

That just left the other 5 of them to duke it out, every morning, for hot water and time in the ship's single, tiny bathroom.

One morning, Sara woke up with a fierce headache. She was hung over, which meant either Mick or Leonard or both were probably hung over too. Or they would be, when they woke up. She'd thought the 70s were wild enough, but last night had been even _wilder_.

She rolled over and picked up her phone, biting back a groan as it shone in her eyes, a bright light stabbing her in the face. 4:23 am. Great. Just great. She rolled back over, squeezing her eyes closed even in the renewed darkness and curling in on herself. She didn't know what, exactly, they were supposed to be doing today, but she hoped it didn't involve any more time travel. She wasn't sure her stomach could handle that, though it didn't feel nearly as bad as her head.

Kendra was sleeping soundly in the other bed, after having gone only to the first bar with them, rather than the three Sara and Leonard and Mick had gone to. Jax and Stein had kept up with them a little bit longer but - what if _Stein_ was hung over, too? He was bad enough in the morning without that.

She decided suddenly that the light outside her room seemed less threatening than a possibly-hung-over and pre-coffee Stein, and that she didn't much want to fight a hung-over Leonard for the shower either. 4:30 or not, she'd better go ahead and get up. She could take a shower and eat something, and then maybe even make it back to bed before the rest of them got up to start the usual morning chaos.

She got up as quietly as she could, allowing herself a groan as she stepped out into the hallway, and closing the door behind her so that Kendra wouldn't hear.

The light felt like it was stabbing her in the head, but at least she was steady on her feet, though she was also achier than she wanted to be. She was steady enough that she could fight if she had to - a calculation she always made when she was in some way compromised, just out of habit - but she hoped she wouldn't. She certainly hoped she wouldn't have to fight any of her teammates, because she wasn't sure she had it in her to deal with the emotional fallout that inevitably followed any argument in such close quarters.

She shoved open the bathroom door and stepped inside, not waiting to make sure it was empty because she assumed, at 4:30 in the morning, that it would be.  Instead, she was met by an indignant squawk.

"Whoops, sorry Jax," she said, "Didn't think you'd be up this early." Her voice was too loud in her ears, and she winced.

Jax missed it, because he wasn't looking at her. He was hiding behind his towel, even though she knew he was already wearing his underwear. "And that would have stopped you?" he asked.

"Shhhh," she answered instinctively, in response to the fact that his voice was even louder and more painful than hers. "But no. I'd have knocked first, though, so you wouldn't be surprised."

Jax was looking more intently at her, now. "Are you hung over?"

"Shhhhh."

"You're totally hung over."

"And you're totally hogging the bathroom, kid. Why are you even up?"

Jax laughed. He probably didn't think it was a loud laugh, but it felt loud, so Sara glared at him anyway.

He looked chastised. "To be honest? Because I wanted to hog the bathroom. I usually get up at 4 and get in and out before everyone's awake and then I go back to bed for a little bit until we're actually all up."

Sara nodded. That _did_ explain why Jax never seemed to appear before halfway through the morning, but was always clean anyway. "Yeah, that was my plan when I woke up with this hangover. I figured I'd get a head start on Snart and Rory."

Having taken stock of the situation, she decided she might as well get going again. The light, warm steam around her, already dissipating after Jax's shower, felt good against her skin, and the longer she stood in it, the more she was dying to get into the shower itself. It would be loud, echoing off the glass walls and tile floor, but it would also be warm and soothing.

"Anyway," she told Jax, "You're obviously clean, so now it's my turn anyway."

It was amazing how fast he made it out of the bathroom when she started to get undressed. Her shirt wasn't even all the way off before he was out the door, towel wrapped haphazardly around him and clothes clutched tightly against his chest.

He could have finished getting dressed in here, she thought as she finished stripping and opened the shower door. Not that it was any of her business whether he changed here or in the room he shared with Ray.

Behind the glass was an electric blue vinyl shower curtain, hanging from a compression rod inside the shower because Palmer hadn't been able to find a way to attach it outside of the shower. She pushed it aside and stepped in, thinking with faint fondness about the day he'd brought it home, complaining that _some people_ (by which he meant her and Rip) couldn't respect other people's privacy.

It wasn't her fault there was only one bathroom and 8 of them.

The curtain closed itself behind her, which it always did because it was too wide and the shower too narrow, and she turned on the water, forgetting about everyone else on the ship as she let the hot water wrap itself around her, warm and soothing and comfortable.

Sara wasn't really aware of the passage of time until the sound of the bathroom door opening told her Rip was awake. Any other day, she'd greet him from the shower, but today was not any other day, and even though the shower was helping with the body aches, she still had that killer headache.

"Somebody left a glass of water and a couple of pills outside the bathroom door."

"Jax," she answered, now that he'd spoken and she couldn't ignore him, "He's a sweet kid. Just leave 'em on the counter, I'll take 'em when I get out."

There was a brief, pregnant pause, in which she could imagine, but not see, Rip looking at her with his usual half-resigned exasperation.

"On second thought," she said, answering the look even though she hadn't seen it, "Just hand 'em here. I'll worry about the water later." She shoved the curtain to the side with one hand and opened the shower door just far enough to get her other hand out around it. A little bit of water spilled out onto the floor, but the shower curtain, still mostly closed, caught most of it.

Rip snorted, then handed her the two aspirin off the small white plate. She let the door close behind her arm and knocked the pills back, then pulled her head and torso back onto her side of the curtain to wash for real and leave Rip to whatever it was he'd come in for. It wouldn't be long before Kendra or one of the boys was pounding on the door, demanding that she hurry up and not run them out of hot water.

It might already be too late on that last front. But if anyone complained, she could say what she usually said when she ran out the hot water, which was that it wasn't her fault she'd been dead once, and it just took her longer to warm up now. It probably wasn't true, but it was as good an excuse as any, and she thought it might have a few good uses left in it before they started just staying mad at her.

Once she was scrubbed and rinsed and her hair washed and conditioned, she was tempted to stay here, waiting to be yelled at to get out, but she was also starting to feel thirsty and hungry - or if not _hungry_ hungry, then at least increasingly certain that it was time to put some food on her stomach to go with the aspirin.

She got reluctantly out of the shower and dried off with the nearest towel, which might have been hers, but also might have been Ray's. It was just in time, too. Before she was fully dressed, she was interrupted by a heavy pounding on the door that suggested that Mick, in fact, might not be hung over after all, or that if he was, he didn't think knocking on the door would hurt his head any.

She opened the door in her jeans and bra, "Yeah, yeah, I'm getting out. You don't have to knock the door down."

Mick smirked at her, "Am I _rushing_ you, princess? 'Cause I've been waiting a good twenty minutes."

"Call me 'princess' again," she answered, pulling a light grey sweater on over her head, "And I'll sock you one better than I did that guy at the bar last night."

He chuckled, "That was fun."

Of course he thought it was fun. He and Snart always seemed to think bar fights were fun. She thought of them more as a means to an end, though she usually wasn't sure if that end was justice, or a drink in peace, or some girl's phone number. Maybe sometimes it was all of them at once, and that was alright, too.

"Don't stink the place up too bad, Rory," she said, heading for the door even as she kept toweling off her hair, "Snart and Kendra still have to shower too, you know."

"If you left 'em any hot water."

"I think you mean if _you_ left 'em any hot water. It's only my fault if it runs out on _you_."

Rory grunted as he closed the door behind her. Whatever that meant.

In the ship's small kitchen, Snart was making fried eggs. He looked like death warmed over, even with his eyes hidden behind his Captain Cold goggles. Sara smiled. She knew she couldn't have been the only one feeling this way.

"Hung over, huh?" she asked him

"You?"

"Oh yeah. Jax left me some aspirin, though." She suddenly realized she'd left both glass and plate on the counter in the bathroom - or rather, Rip had, and she hadn't bothered to take them with her.

"Lucky. All I've got is Mick's shitty coffee."

Sara grimaced. "You let _Mick_ make it?"

"Didn't have a choice. He was already doing it by the time I made it out here. Cheery bastard."

She wasn't sure she'd ever even imagined the word 'cheery' being used to describe Mick, but she _was_ sure she'd be responding just about exactly this well if she'd been the one to wake up to a hangover-free roommate already awake. She finished drying her hair, then ignored the pot of coffee and got herself a drink of water.

"You making eggs for everybody, or just yourself?" she asked, after taking a long drink of water that made her feel significantly better.

"You know what, Lance-" he started, before stopping short when Kendra walked in, hair a mess.

Kendra yawned, "Dang. I was hoping it'd be one of you in the shower. Now it'll smell like Mick in there."

"Snart can go next."

"Gee, thanks. 'Make my breakfast, Snart.' 'Take the smelly shower, Snart.' You're not the boss of me, Lance."

"Oh come on, Leonard," Kendra interrupted, "Take the next shower. I'll finish making breakfast."

" _I'll_ finish making breakfast, thanks."

"And then you'll take the smelly shower?" Kendra asked, getting a mug out of the cabinet next to the stove.

"Don't drink that, my idiot roommate made it." He didn't say so, but it was clear from his voice that they'd won.

Kendra put the mug back in the cabinet, and both girls tried not to look too pleased with themselves.

Leonard Snart made awesome fried eggs. Sara thought Kendra was really missing out by insisting on making her own 100%-non-runny _scrambled_ eggs, but then Mick came whistling into the kitchen while she was still eating them, and Leonard _had_ to take the next shower. Smart woman.

When Ray joined them in the kitchen, he immediately dumped out the coffee and started making a fresh pot, which both Sara and Leonard, clean but unfortunately still cold from his shower, awaited impatiently. Before Sara could snag a cup, though, Stein was up and grumbling his way toward the kitchen, and she decided that she still had just enough of a headache left through the aspirin to justify leaving before he could come all the way in.

She sat outside the bathroom door this time, waiting for it to open since the mirror probably wouldn't unfog itself until the door sat open for a while. Unless it was already clearing because they were out of hot water. Whoops.

Jax came to sit next to her. "You feeling better?"

"Yeah, mostly. Thanks for the aspirin."

"No problem."

They sat in silence together, but that was ok. Sara felt like she could do that with several of her team members, and it was comfortable. Jax was one of them.

After a few moments, he broke the silence again, and that was alright, too. "You know what's crazy?"

"What?"

"I didn't even really drink before the accident. I mean, technically I wasn't old enough anyway, but I was the cool kid, the star football player, so I could have. I got invited to all the parties and stuff, and sure I'd have a beer or whatever, but I never got _drunk_. I just really thought, you know, that I'd make it big in college ball and head to the NFL and I couldn't let stuff like that get in the way, not 'til I was sure I was gonna get there."

"And after the accident?" she asked

"Well, I know what to take for a hangover."

She nodded.

They settled into silence again, but this time she broke it. "I can't figure out if I hold my liquor differently, now that I've been dead."

"Yeah, that's a weird thing to say."

"Yeah, but it's true. I'll figure it out, though. I'm pretty sure I'm just starting out with a whole new undead liver, so... whatever that means."

"Yeah."

Kendra interrupted before Sara could figure out what else to say, or even _if_ there was anything else to say. She pushed the door open, but didn't come out into the hall. "Mirror's clear. _Somebody_ used all the hot water."

Sara sprang up to her feet, Jax following her, and took her usual spot at the mirror, jammed between Kendra's left hip and the wall. There was no real reason for her and Kendra to both put their makeup on at the same time on a day like this, when they weren't in a big hurry and all jostling for bathroom space anyway.

But that was what they did, these days, and so she handed Kendra the brush she knew the other girl would need first and got started, trying to figure out whether the scented candle in the very back corner of the counter was a new one or not.

Jax put the toilet cover down and sat on it, relaxing into his usual Stein-is-in-the-kitchen spot. "How are you, Kendra? Feeling ok after last night?"

"I'm not sure what kind of a lightweight you think I am. I only had a couple of drinks."

"Maybe _you_ only had a couple. I had to bring Stein home because we weren't sure he'd make it back on his own."

Sara laughed, remembering it. "Yeah," she said, taking the brush she needed from Kendra, who had offered it to her without being asked, "He was pretty sloshed. I think he resented it when I told him his younger self was way more fun."

"You didn't!"

"She did. And that was _after_ he'd gotten a little buzzed."

"But before he got sloshed?"

"Yeah," Sara answered, "Which doesn't make it my _fault_ exactly, just my - um - _invitation,_ maybe."

"Yeah," Jax snorted, "You _invited_ him to get hammered, and then you _invited_ me to bring him back home so you and the Temperature Twins could go get into another bar fight without me."

"Hey," Leonard interjected, announcing his arrival before he was all the way in the room. He was carrying a cup of coffee, and Sara couldn't help feeling jealous about it, "I thought I told you not to call us that."

Jax spluttered like he didn't know quite what to say to that, but felt he had to say something. Sara and Kendra traded eyeshadows without even really looking at each other and tried not to laugh.

"How bad's Stein this morning, then?" Kendra asked, changing the subject. Sara might have just let Jax squirm a little longer, which she felt a little bad about, since he'd been so nice to her this morning.

"I'm in here, aren't I?" Snart answered, like they didn't all recognize the spot between the towel racks where he was leaning as his own usual place. Of course, usually he was waiting there for any break in their collective motion so that he could shove his way to the sink to shave.

Kendra snorted, "Yeah, I figured it was that. I knew you weren't having a helping-me-with-my-hair kind of morning."

"Just 'cause you can't reach the back of your own head-"

Before Kendra could tell Snart she absolutely _could_ reach the back of her head and it was just _easier_ to let him do it, Sara interrupted instead, "We know you, Captain Cold. You see a hot thing close to a lady's head and you've just gotta save her from it before she gets burned. You're a hero."

"I am _not_ a hero."

"No," Jax joked, "You're a legend, apparently."

" _I'm_ a legend," Kendra answered, " _He_ 's a self-made, barely-reformed villain. But he's pretty good with a curling iron."

"Self-made, _un_ reformed thief," Leonard corrected, "And thanks." This time, it wasn't even a sarcastic thank you.

Sara sort of wondered how she'd ended up with friends like these. But then, it wasn't like her previous sets of friends had been normal, either. At least here she felt like she was doing some good without hurting her family at the same time.

She studied the two eyeliners in her hand carefully, trying to work out which one was dark brown and which was actually black. They could really use some better lighting in here, but they could also use more space and a second sink and a bigger water heater and maybe, when it really came down to it, a whole second bathroom.

She worked out which eyeliner was which and handed Kendra's off to her.

"Ugh." The groan from the doorway told Sara that Stein really must be particularly bad today. He had even Ray sounding glum instead of like his usual, cheery, morning person self. But as she glanced over to look at Ray in the mirror, she was more excited about the three mugs of coffee in his hands than she was worried about him.

"Ray, you're the best," Kendra declared, taking her cup of coffee from Sara as they passed it down, as comfortably as they usually did their makeup brushes and mascara.

"Seconded," Sara added, taking her own cup from him once Kendra's was safely in her hands, and ignoring for the moment the fact that she'd only lined one eye. Ray made the best coffee, and she'd been dying for a cup since at least the time she got out of the shower. Somehow, when he made it, it came out even better than when Kendra did, and she used to be a barista.

Ray, one hand free now, pulled his towel (or maybe it was hers?) off his shoulder and tried to hand it to Snart, "Mind hanging this up? _Somebody_ left it in the kitchen." He knew it was her. Sara knew he knew it was her. She met his eyes once, calmly, so he'd know she wasn't really sorry. He might as well get used to it, if they were gonna live together all the time.

Snart stared at the outstretched towel, one eyebrow raised, until Jax got up and hung it up for Ray. Then Jax sat back in his usual spot, and everyone relaxed again, sure they'd managed to avoid an argument for once. Or, at least, to avoid an argument amongst the five of them.

Ray leaned against the doorway, also his usual spot, while Kendra put her coffee down and went back to winging her eyeliner. Sara took another few moments to enjoy the coffee, enjoying the comparatively relaxed morning that meant she could afford to without being shoved out of the way.

"So, how bad is he _really_?" Kendra asked.

"Let me put it this way," Ray explained, "As I was leaving the kitchen, I heard Rip mutter to Mick that today he almost even understands why we all want to hang out in the bathroom in the mornings."

"I mean," Sara said, taking one long last drink of coffee before putting her cup down, "It's not exactly _hanging out_."

"I'm kind of just hanging out," Jax admitted.

"Yeah," Sara replied, starting to line her other eye, "But you have to deal with him more than most of us, so that's probably fair."

"I'm just here to shave," Snart said.

"You shaved yesterday, and you look fine."

"Thanks, Kendra. Way to back me up."

Ray laughed, "It's ok. I think he thinks we're all freaks anyway. But he's the one who picked us, so he can get over it."

Sara smiled, and she kept smiling even as Rip's voice, a little more exasperated than usual, came over the PA system and told them all to come meet him on the bridge. They always knew he was getting impatient when he called them instead of having Gideon do it, and it was just more confirmation that a hung over Martin Stein was about as fun as a hangover itself.

At least she had her friends to help her handle it. They even waited for her to finish her makeup before they all left together.

**Author's Note:**

> sansasnarks also wrote a fic based on the same tumblr post and it's really fun, if you're interested!
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/5894992


End file.
